


Till the Night is Gone

by Kivrin



Series: Through All the Length of Days [7]
Category: Foyle's War
Genre: Angst, Depression, Episode Related, F/M, PTSD, WWII
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 10:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kivrin/pseuds/Kivrin
Summary: Missing scenes from the episode Enemy Fire (February 1941.)





	1. Chapter 1

_I don’t sleep, I can’t eat, I feel sick. Sometimes I can’t stand it because you’re not with me. Other times, I don’t care if I ever see you again. I know that’s horrible, I don’t want it to be true but it’s as if you don’t exist for me, as if we never met. -_ Andrew in the episode Enemy Fire.

* * *

 

“Don’t make me go back,”  Andrew whispered. “Don’t… “  A pinched, choking sob caught him. “Don’t make me go back…”

Sam took the untouched tea out of his shaking hands and set it on the floor. “Shh,” she said helplessly. “Andrew.  Shh.”

“Don’t make… make me…”

She put her arms around his shoulders. He didn’t cry like a little boy. He cried like a man at a child’s funeral: with quiet, painful, unpracticed sobs. His flying jacket and his forehead were equally clammy to the touch. Sam bit her lip as she stroked his damp hair. “I won’t.” _I can’t, really_ , she added silently, to counter her own arguments. _What would I do, hit him over the head and drag him?_ “I won’t make you.”

The sobs came faster then. “Sam,” he gulped.  

“I’m here.  It’s all right, I’m here.” She rubbed his back as she frowned at the clock on the mantel. Bets was likely to be back from the Guides meeting at any moment, and Mrs. Briggs would be there within three-quarters of an hour.  Thank goodness Margaret was on nights and had already left to catch her bus. Andrew shuddered against her, whether from tears or from chill, she couldn’t tell. She touched her lips to his forehead.

“‘M not ill,” he protested, thought he didn’t move away.  “Haven’t got that much luck.”

Sam swallowed hard.  “Would that be luck?”

He shrugged.  When she looked, she could see his eyes were squeezed shut but the tears were still coming, as inexorable as the rain, though the ragged hitches in his breathing stopped just short of sobs. His lips were cracked and peeling, and she wanted to kiss them even as she wanted to shake him and shout _what do you mean, as if we’d never met?_  But alongside the hot sting of those words she felt a glow that might have been pride, because however far out of his head he was with flying fatigue, he’d come to her.

“Well, I’m going to look after you as if you were.  Tonight, anyway.”  

He nodded, and swiped at his cheeks with the back of one hand.  Sam sat back on her heels and tried to think.  She couldn’t hide him in her room - aside from anything else, the latch was weak and the door liable to swing open from the vibration of someone passing in the hall.  There was a Morrison under the dining-room table, hidden by the tablecloth, but if a siren went he’d be discovered, and there was the same problem with the cellar.  And whatever he said about not being ill, he needed to be out of the damp.

Then it came to her.  Mrs. Briggs had a box room - well, a deep closet - between Sam’s room and the bathroom, made out of the leftover space when what had been the back bedroom on the first floor was made over for a bath and a toilet. Behind the rod that supported Mrs Briggs’ ancient wedding gown and a few even more ancient coats far too narrow for her current bulk but too precious for the jumble, and Bets’ footlocker, there was a good five feet of space. She could give him her torch, and a hot water bottle and a thermos flask of tea.  And a Kilner jar, in case. 

“Come on,” she said, getting to her feet.  She held out her hand and Andrew put his trustingly in it.


	2. Chapter 2

“Shoes off,” Sam said.

Andrew tried to pry one off with the toe of the other.  She made a small chiding sound and then knelt to undo his laces.He ought to tell her not to, he thought, but he just looked down at her bent head and the dim gleam where the lamplight caught a kirby grip working free from the roll at the nape of her neck.

“Your socks are wet too, but I don’t think they’ll leave a mark on the matting.”  Sam stood up.  She took his hand, held the shoes in her free one, and led him up the stairs.  

Sam’s hand was warm, and the drugget was rough under his stocking feet. In between there didn’t seem to be anything.

“The loo’s in here.”  Sam nodded at a closed door.  “You’d better… before anyone gets home.  Just try,” she added, though Andrew hadn’t spoken.

He didn’t want to let go of her hand, but when he did she smiled and that was a comfort.  Alone behind a closed door the tears started again, but he didn’t sob aloud this time, and after he’d washed his hands he put a little cold water on his face as well.  When he opened the door Sam was waiting with a towel and a blanket.  “All done,” he said.

“You’d better have your jacket off, and your braces… there won’t be space to move about much, and you’ll be more comfortable.”  

These were orders he could follow.  He peeled off the sheepskin flight jacket, let it fall, then raised the hem of his rollneck jumper to unbutton his braces from his trousers.  He tugged them free in the back, then looked at Sam.

Her smile was tight.  “Bend down a bit, let me dry your hair.”  She rubbed vigorously and for a moment he had a dizzyingly vivid memory of going home with a university friend ( _what was his name, what was his name, what were any of their names_ ) whose family kept horses, the smell of the barn and the way the groom hissed as he rubbed the horses down after a hunt. “There,” Sam said.  “You’ll do now, I think.  I wish I had something dry for you to put on.”  

“It’s all right.”  

“I’ve put your shoes in my room, under the bed, I think they’ll dry out better there.  You keep your jacket, it’ll be a better pillow than a rolled-up jumper which is what I’d been thinking of.”  She opened another door.  “Here, it’ll be a bit of a squeeze to get over Bets’ footlocker, but there’s space beyond, I checked again just now.”  She picked up a torch and shone it into the depths of the narrow box room. Hugging his jacket to his chest, Andrew followed the beam, pushing aside some bulky garments hanging from a clothes rod in order to climb over the trunk.  Beyond, he found a blanket already spread on the floor, and a battered book titled _The Fountain-Pen Mystery_. “You keep the torch,” Sam was saying, leaning over the trunk while he slowly settled himself on the floor, “and the other blanket… I’ll get you some supper when I can.  Oh, here, I’ll take your braces and hide them with your shoes.”

He passed over his braces and took the torch, but caught her hand.  “Sam,” he said.  He was crying again; he couldn’t stop it.

Her warm fingers dug into his.  “Andrew.”  She put his braces down, pushed the second blanket over to him, and sat on the trunk.  “I’m sorry,” she said in an urgent rush, “I know you hate being cooped up, but it’s this or being found out, and there’s a window in the back that I think will open, just be sure the torch…”

“No,” he whispered.  “Just, thank you.  Sam, thank you.”

“Oh.”  He couldn’t see her face, but he knew, somehow, that it had softened. “Oh,” she said again, very quietly.  

“I’m warmer already,” he told her.  It wasn’t _I’ll be all right_ , which he ought to say, which he ought to want to say, but it was true, and the words came out clearer and steadier than he’d hoped.  

“Good.”  Sam leaned in and kissed his forehead.  “Now, keep quiet,” she whispered.  She twitched the hanging coats into place, then shut the door firmly.  In a moment he could hear her steps on the stairs.

He set Sam’s book carefully against the wall, switched off the torch and laid it beside the book, then leaned against the wall himself.  He breathed in the scent of old mothballs, and older wool, and dust.  He didn’t feel cooped up.  He felt insulated, cocooned, hidden.  From the ground floor he heard a door bang.  A woman called a greeting, and Sam answered.  Andrew let his head droop, and he slept.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the hymn "Lead, Kindly Light," text by John Henry Newman, often sung to the tune Lux Benigna.
> 
> Previously posted on Tumblr and in part on FFN.


End file.
